John Terry has been fined £200,000 and banned for 4 games for the incident involving QPR's Anton Ferdinand. The fine which is under two weeks wages for the Chelsea man is secondary to the four match ban and the damage to Terrys reputation and standing in the game.

The fine and ban was imposed after the former England captain was found guilty (pending any appeal) the FA stated

"The Football Association charged Mr Terry on Friday 27 July 2012 with using abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour towards Queens Park Rangers' Anton Ferdinand and which included a reference to colour and/or race contrary to FA Rule E3 [2] in relation to the Queens Park Rangers FC versus Chelsea FC fixture at Loftus Road on 23 October 2011."

This was despite the fact that a criminal case for the same incident saw Terry cleared of all charges.

I am not here to debate if this was right or wrong or even if the fine and ban are fair but to point out the lack of consistency in the FA ruling.

Cast your mind back to 16th November 2011, I know it's a long time ago but you may just recall the high profile case of one Mr Luis Suarez who was found guilty by the FA for the following.

How do they decide the penalties? Do they simply spin the 'Wheel of Misfortune' or see what the weather is like when the Ground hog emerges form his burrow? There is simply no apparent pattern Terry has half the match bans of Suarez, which would seem to indicate they thought his actions to be the lesser of the two but then Suarez was fined under a quarter of the Terry fine so thats better?

This is not the first time that I have been confused by an FA ruling and I dare say it will not be the last. Can anyone explain this to me?

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I understand it but I'm disgusted by the reasoning. Forget about his social misdoings and errors of judgement for a second, Terry is an icon for English football. He is one of the last of a dying breed of hard-nosed defenders that play for England with their heart on their sleeve. The publicity of his social wrongs and now this as well have been a nightmare for the FA and the English national team for years so the FA is torn between extinguishing a symbol of our national team and not sending their message across clearly, something they attempted to do when they stripped him of his captaincy. So fining him a seemingly large amount of money would seem to the masses that the FA is actually doing something. (the majority of people have blinders on to the amount of money these guys make in a week) but the reality is that they can't allow a national icon to sit on the bench and cause even more publicity and doubt about the national side and Terry's involvement.

On the other hand with Suarez you have a Ukrainian player who was blacklisted since the world cup as being a dirty player. He has no status in the eyes of the english media and therefore nothing is gained by fining him money and everything is gained by making an example of him and saying to everyone "If you're racialy intolerant on the field you will not play in this league". Fining a player money is a statement to the player and the club he offended, supposedly showing that they are doing something about the situation. Banning a player from matches is putting the player in his place and sending the message out to the league.

I hope this doesn't offend anyone, it is not intended to be taken in a racial way but this is my view of the situation and why it exists

I think we need to remember that these were two very different cases despite ultimately both being about racism.

Rightly or wrongly, the FA perceived that there were different levels of racism in each case. Shouting "Black Black Black Black" at a black player while also making questionable comments about the players status as a result of his skin colour (or at least that's how the FA perceived what Suarez did) is not the same as asking the question "Did you think I called you a n****r? " (which again, is apparently how the FA perceived the Terry situation). It's all about perception.

Very few people outside of Liverpool or Chelsea fans argue against either case being at least somewhat racist-driven.... The problem is how you try to quantify the level of racism - which to me seems like an impossible task.

As I'm getting at, it's all about perceptions and interpretations, and in my interpretation of the rulings, the FA deemed Suarez to be openly aggressive and taunting with his racial comments, while Terry was punished for making an ignorant mistake, rather than being aggressive and attacking Anton Ferdinand for his race.

As for my personal opinion: Racism is Racism. Terry should have been given the same ban as Suarez. So above is more my explanation how I think the FA worked in this case, not what I think is right.

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@Zilch: Didn't Terry retire from international football before the ban was handed down? I don't think his relationship with the England squad would have influenced them too much because of that. As an icon of English football, his role had very much ended, and if anything that was more likely to have a negative effect on the ruling, if any effect at all.

Oh, and the only offence I think you could cause here is calling Suarez Ukrainian instead of Uruguayan.

Terry & Suarez, was charged with a breach of the FA's Rule E3(2) which states that football people should not use "abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour". The rule states that if such abuse includes "reference to a person's ethnic origin, colour or race", the panel can consider doubling the penalty, The panel in the Suarez case specifically said that a four-game ban "is the entry-point" for breaches of E3(2) and it did double that minimum penalty to "reflect the gravity of the misconduct" - some data which I managed to pull out from Internet

Now as per above quote, panel can double the minimum 4 match ban if abuse includes "reference to a person's ethnic origin, colour or race", As per FA statement Terry was found guilty of abusing and insulting words toward Ferdinand which include reference to race and color, apparently there is no reason why Terry's minimum four matches ban was not double

As per the articles which I read on subject topic, the monetary penalties was decided based on players wage, Suarez was earning 40k a week when he was charged with that penalty, whereas Terry is earning (not 100 % sure) 150K per week.

First, in my opinion Terry and Suarez are not racist. People say things in the heat of the moment to hurt the opponent. It makes me little impression if an entire wing of the stadium is imitating an airplane to make fun of the United tragedy, or are taunting Liverpool about their stampede tragedy or calling Wenger a pedophile and for Adebayor to have been killed instead of his friend in Africa.

I am sure Evra was not keeping his mouth shut either. And I would not take the word of these two for anything. Footballers are mean and childish and the crowd is often stupid. This is not an easy environment to educate. But you have to make examples and These two were picked

As for the topic of the blog. When you punish a player for more games, you hurt not just him, but the club as well. In Suarez case, Liverpool was punished too, because losing him for 8 matches was a big blow to them. Chelsea somehow was spared, because the money will hurt only Terry.

Now whether this had anything to do with the clubs or is merely an act of randomness by the Wizards of FA, it is hard to say

I don't think I'm old enough to ever remember a time when the FA had consistency. Maybe a few of the old-timers on here can fondly remember. The only explanation that I can see is that the FA are also racists! AND THE PLOT thickens

Both instances dragged on so long that I had begun to not care about them at all. As sad as it is, the biggest turn out from both cases were not racism but as Matt stated the consistency of the FA. It honestly should not have taken that long for them to come up with a ruling on either situations. There were ample sources of evidence to conclude on the ruling (camera angles, player/manager statements, etc.) for a decision to be made within a week at the very most. In the states there aren't very many cases regarding racism in our major sports (or any that I can honestly think of at all), but if there ever happens to be an incident where a player, coach, owner, etcetera does something to tarnish the perception of the league as a whole they come down with the hammer swiftly and send a message. I hope the FA can take steps to follow suit. Guilty or not this should have not dragged on as much as it did